Lai See | Revealing Hong Kong identity numbers is not a privacy issue

Corporate governance advocate David Webb has come up with an interesting wheeze to persuade the government to drop its planned move to remove directors' addresses and ID numbers from the Company Registry. The ostensible reason for the government's move is to protect directors' privacy. But, as Webb and other opponents of the proposed change argue, the HKID isn't something private like a PIN number or a password that authenticates you. It is simply a more precise identifier than a name, since a number of different people can have the same name, but not the same ID number.

Revealing an ID number will divulge nothing more about a person other than that he is a particular person and not another. So Webb's suggestion is that everyone should publish their HKID number to make the point that publishing ID numbers is not a privacy issue.

So just for the record, the ID number of Howard Winn is K285774(A). David Webb's is P135143(9). Only those engaged in wrongdoing need worry about revealing their ID numbers. It seems odd that the government should be helping them.

There is some dismay among green groups over what they believe is the government's determination to push ahead with "incineration" as a way of dealing with Hong Kong's municipal waste. Readers will be aware that plans to build a traditional mass burn incinerator at Shek Kwu Chau off south Lantau were shelved last year by the Legislative Council. However, such despondency appears to be misplaced, since the government is committed to rethinking the project. There has been some confusion as "incineration" has been loosely used to include all processes using heat such as traditional incineration and plasma arc.

However, Environment Secretary Wong Kam-sing said in December last year that the Environmental Protection Department would study different technologies for dealing with waste, including plasma arc. This was confirmed recently when another senior figure told Lai See that the EPD would bring in "experts" to brief them, rather than salesmen or consultants.